Juventus won its 29th Serie A title Sunday with a 1-0 win against Palermo. Arturo Vidal’s penalty was the decisive goal as Juventus successfully defended the league title with three games to spare.

The win means Juventus has won back-to-back titles for the first time in a decade, setting the standard for Italian soccer along the way. It was another successful year for the team, which also reached the semifinals of the domestic cup and the quarterfinals of the Champions League.

Juventus’s success under Coach Antonio Conte has been cathartic for a club that recently experienced one of the darkest periods in its history. Although it is officially Juventus’s 29th scudetto, or Italian championship, players and fans held up a banner and plaques with the No. 31 on them after the game. The reason for the discrepancy are the two titles, in 2004-5 and 2005-6, that were revoked by the Italian Soccer Federation in 2006 after a nationwide match-fixing scandal that implicated Juventus among other teams in the league.

In what came to be known as the Calciopoli scandal, Juventus and some other Italian clubs were accused of rigging league matches and handpicking favorable referees. Being champions at the time, Juventus became the face of the scandal, and the initial ruling by the Italian federation even had it demoted to the third division with a 30-point deduction. Various appeals lessened the punishment, but Juventus still faced the brunt of the ruling.

Juventus was eventually stripped of two titles and demoted to the second division for the first time in club history. It was also prevented from participating in the Champions League the next season and docked 9 points to start its year in the second division (Serie B), virtually making its efforts of getting back up impossible.

On top of that, the club lost key players like Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Lilian Thuram and the World Cup winning captain and defender Fabio Cannavaro. Despite players like Gianluigi Buffon and Alessandro Del Piero staying with the club to help it back up, many people believed that after winning six of the last 10 titles, Juventus’s era of domination had come to an end.

Still, Juventus persevered and started its long journey back to the top of Italian soccer. The club found a good balance between experience and integrating new young players like Sebastian Giovinco and Claudio Marchisio. It won Serie B in spite of the 9-point deduction and was promoted back to Serie A.

In its first year back, in the 2007-8 season, it finished third and qualified for the Champions League the next season, where it progressed from the group stages, beating Real Madrid twice before being eliminated by Chelsea. The next year it finished second in the league. The club was clearly on its way back to the top but could not break Inter Milan’s stranglehold on the league.

After disappointing finishes from 2009 to 2011, the club took a chance by appointing the former player and fan favorite Conte as the new coach, a move that turned around the club’s fortunes for good. Conte rebuilt the team, implementing a new tactical formation and style of play that swept the league in his first season and knocked Inter off its throne. Juventus was unbeaten through the year, the first time in the modern 38-match format, and set a defensive record for fewest goals conceded in league history.

Juventus was back, but another scandal threatened to derail its resurgence. Conte became mired in another match-fixing scandal. He was accused of not disclosing knowledge of two fixed matches in his time as coach of Siena. He was barred from sitting on the sideline for four months, returning in December.

The team dedicated its Supercoppa win at the start of the season to Conte, making their reunion that much more significant. In the Champions League, the team topped its group and played a part in knocking out the defending champion, Chelsea. Meanwhile, in the league, it has not given up first place since the second week of the season.

After all the club, the players and Conte have been through, one can understand why the players and fans proudly displayed No. 31 last weekend.

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Goal, The New York Times soccer blog, will report on news and features from the world of soccer and around the Web. Times editors and reporters will follow international tournaments and provide analysis of games. There will be interviews with players, coaches and notable soccer fans, as well as a weekly blog column by Red Bulls forward Jozy Altidore. Readers can discuss Major League Soccer, foreign leagues and other issues with fellow soccer fans.